A concern about vengeance

[Deleted]

First off I'm not in beta, my thoughts are based on what I have read about it.

At the moment stamina stacking is the only option for tanking, for a while I tried to go against that wisdom and I did try building up avoidance, but after discussion with my healers I changed and tested it... anyway, it's pretty much accepted that stacking stamina is the way to go.

My concern is that it will be even more so in Cataclysm than it is currently. I have a number of reasons that I think this will be so, but the primary reason is Vengeance. Simply put, for gearing up a tank there are three broad areas to look at: threat, damage reduction, and total health. At present stacking stamina only affects total health (or if you prefer effective health), when vengeance is implemented stacking stamina will also increase your threat as well. In my view significantly increasing its comparative value, which already dominates. I know this will be most noticeable at end game which isn't yet open for testing, but I am curious to hear what other tanks think about this.

I personally think juggling stats to get a balance is more fun than stacking one thing and ignoring everything else, and I think this is a negative concentration on a single stat.

Whatever you think, thank you for reading.

[Deleted]

Even if you not listened it as a direct concern, I'm still thinking why the hell they made it dispellable.

It's to suck in PvP being handicapped like this.

[Fornaw]

I'm a little confused as to what your end goal is.

Do you want gemming for dodge/avoidance to be viable? That should never be the case because tanks should be looking for reliable survivability in their gear. Avoidance is nice but it's never going to be reliable. Gemming for avoidance is like buying 2 lottery tickets instead of 1, yes your chance of winning goes up, but the amount of money you expect to lose goes up as well.

Do you want to gem for threat stats? I personally like to match sockets with half threat gems from time to time, but I wouldn't expect progression tanks to do that because it's suboptimal survivability and survivability is everything in progression tanking.

Are you worried that you won't have any avoidance/threat stats on armor because stamina gets more attractive? Stamina doesn't compete with avoidance and threat on armor. Avoidance competes with threat but in general the stamina is essentially fixed by the ilvl.

Are you hoping that avoidance can become a viable trinket option, either as a use or as a base stat? I think it's way too early to make a call on something like that based off Vengeance alone.

So what does "Juggling Stats" mean exactly? Healers and DPS don't juggle stats as far as I can tell, the best you can get is situations where a socket bonus is worth activating. Int, Agi, Str, and Stam will be essentially fixed by item level. You don't choose the piece with less Intellect because it has more haste, that option doesn't exist. DPS might be willing to gem for some hit or expertise until they cap, but after that they will be looking primarily for more Int/Agi/Str. If by "juggling stats" you mean choosing between the Str/Stam/Hit/Dodge piece and the Str/Stam/Dodge/Parry piece I'm sure you'll have that option from time to time, vengeance won't make either piece a clear winner anymore than either piece could be considered a clear winner today.

[Enkidulgaa]

I'm more concerned about tank damage in dungeons. Right now tanks already deal awesome damage. It perfectly possible to top meters in dungeons if you swap some tank items for DPS simply be the sheer amount of AoE damage tanks have.
Come Cataclysm, tanks will have the most AP of all characters. 10% HP in attack power means we'll look at tanks having AP in the tens of thousands. Shield Bash will deal 100% AP damage since there is no longer any block value.
I dont really get how blizzard wants to make threat an issue again when they give tanks double the amount of attack power of DPS

[Deleted]

Fornaw you raise good points, thanks. I had failed to think about it in quite those terms. What I mean by juggling, I don't really mean how to choose armour so much as there is rarely multiple items at the same item level for a given location. Which results in most cases there being a clear advantage between two items. I'm thinking more about how to choose the more customizable things, enchants, gems, reforging. Essentially you're right in that I would like to see avoidance being more competitive compared with stamina. I don't really want it to be the clear best, I want it to be close enough that there is a choice. While perfect balance is impossible, I think it should possible that both can be viable.

[Jaitee]

I'm more concerned about tank damage in dungeons. Right now tanks already deal awesome damage. It perfectly possible to top meters in dungeons if you swap some tank items for DPS simply be the sheer amount of AoE damage tanks have.
Come Cataclysm, tanks will have the most AP of all characters. 10% HP in attack power means we'll look at tanks having AP in the tens of thousands. Shield Bash will deal 100% AP damage since there is no longer any block value.
I dont really get how blizzard wants to make threat an issue again when they give tanks double the amount of attack power of DPS

difference in AP between classes/specs is easy to solve blizz just has to adjusts the scaling of their attacks

my only concern with vengence will be in our need to have high vengence in order to generate threat
using WotLK as an example imagine a group of 5 friends all in full ICC 25H gear against raid bosses and trash the tank is taking big hits and therefore generating good threat due to high vengence
they then go to do their daily heroic the tank is taking small hits and is generating less then half his normal threat

then there is the run in attack the boss and get lucky with some dodge and parry and not get hit by the boss for 10 seconds therefore not having vengeance up

[Enkidulgaa]

difference in AP between classes/specs is easy to solve blizz just has to adjusts the scaling of their attacks

my only concern with vengence will be in our need to have high vengence in order to generate threat
using WotLK as an example imagine a group of 5 friends all in full ICC 25H gear against raid bosses and trash the tank is taking big hits and therefore generating good threat due to high vengence
they then go to do their daily heroic the tank is taking small hits and is generating less then half his normal threat

then there is the run in attack the boss and get lucky with some dodge and parry and not get hit by the boss for 10 seconds therefore not having vengeance up

Which means that avoidance actually hurts threat since it takes longer to build up vengeance